


Cipher

by SallyJAvery (DrSallySparrow)



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Last Jedi
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - World War II, Double Agents, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, French Kissing, French Resistance, I mean come on they're spIES, Kissing, Resistance, Spies, Trust Issues, see what i did there?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 11:37:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13950759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrSallySparrow/pseuds/SallyJAvery
Summary: "Jeopardise me or my operation again," he breathes, "and I'll kill you."Rey's parents brought her to England when she was a child, abandoning her in London with no explanation. Now, with war raging across mainland Europe and the possibility that a network of undercover operatives working in France has been compromised, Leia Organa of the Special Operations Executive asks Rey to return to her homeland.





	1. Asymptote

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so I've been bouncing around on the sidelines of the great big trashfire that is Reylo for a while now and I just couldn't resist it any more. 
> 
> Also because I am very simple in my word associations I couldn't get the idea of the Resistance being, you know, the _Resistance_ out of my head, and so would like to present you with the painfully historically inaccurate Second World War AU that absolutely nobody asked for. 
> 
> Chapters will be named for real SOE circuits that operated in occupied France between 1941 and 1945.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Asymptote** : A straight line continually approaching, but never meeting, a curve._

 

**_Poplar, East London - June 1942_ **

Rey dreams of the sound of engines: the harsh, grumbling voices that are as much feeling as noise.

When she sleeps she hears the patient rumble of trucks and the low whine of planes. The smoothness of a well-tuned car and the dull throb of a ship.

She has been alone here for so long now. Years of London’s grey skies; her grey streets falling away in straight, grey lines. Years dreaming of the backseat of a car; of the hold of a boat; of the hum of engines against her cheek as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

Some days - some nights - Rey dreams of France.

She dreams in a language like music, and of a large hand holding her own. She dreams of the broad expanses and narrow twists of Paris and she misses it in an empty, aching way, even though it was so very long ago now.

She knows, deep inside herself, that whatever happens with the War she will never have it back the way that it was, though she still dreams of going back: of stepping off the straight line and into a different life.

But she cannot leave, even though she knows that the owner of the soft hand, who whispers to her in the space between sleep and waking, is likely gone forever. She hears the whisper, and it holds her there like a tether, and so she stays.

_Je reviens._

Rey spends her days with her hands in the engines of the cars that come through Plutt’s garage. If she is up to her elbows in grease; if she buries herself in spark plugs and cam shafts and alternators; then she does not hear it so loudly.

_Je reviens._

In the days before the War her presence in the garage would raise eyebrows, and Plutt would wave a hand and explain her away as his niece. He has never told her another story, but still she knows it is not true. Now that the men are being called up and more and more women train as mechanics and ambulance drivers, the girl in the grease-stained overalls is barely worthy of remark.

For years she slept in the small backroom office where Plutt keeps his books, but as soon as she had scraped together enough money she rented her own room in a boarding house a few streets away. There, in the scant hours that she spends away from her work, she surrounds herself with small treasures. A doll made from ragged scraps of cloth. A tin helmet from the Great War. The paperback books that she buys from Woolworths whenever she can spare a sixpence.

Most nights she walks home when darkness has already fallen, through a city that has been ripped apart and where no light shows from the blacked out windows. Often, she stares upwards into the sky and wonders at the brightness of the stars.

She lives on the top floor, and sometimes during the Blitz it had felt like a long way to the air-raid shelter at the end of the street. When the sirens screamed out on those nights she used to climb to the roof instead, watching the searchlights that waltzed across the sky and occasionally caught the gleaming underbelly of a plane. She would hug her knees tight to her chest, and watch the bright blossoms of fire where the bombs fall. They left bright afterimages when she closed her eyes, and the heavy _whomp_ s of explosions had sometimes been near enough to rattle the fragile bricks and mortar beneath her.

 

* * *

 

There’s an airfield about twenty miles away, out past the edge of the city, and for whatever reason a lot of the officers seem to bring their cars to Plutt’s. Rey suspects it probably has less to do with the quality of the mechanical services on offer than it does the fact that Unkar manages to do a thriving black market trade in cigarettes and chocolate, nylon stockings and ludicrously expensive perfumes, but it does mean that the garage has managed to stay in business in spite of heavy fuel rationing.

There’s one senior officer in particular whose car seems to be in the shop almost every week. It’s a beautiful old Rolls, probably manufactured just after the last war, but it seems to always be on the verge of falling apart completely. Privately, Rey wonders what on earth the man is putting the poor vehicle through, but she doesn’t say anything, just busies herself cleaning the carburetor, or hammering out the dented bodywork.

She’s just finished tuning the cylinders, carefully revving the engine and listening to it turn over, sweet as a song, when a gruff voice speaks from behind her.

“Nice work, kid.”

Rey jumps, her foot lifting from the accelerator so quickly that she kicks the underside of the steering column, and the man chuckles quietly, his face creasing into weathered lines as she turns off the engine. He’s wearing the distinctive blue-grey RAF uniform, his peaked cap removed and tucked neatly under his arm to reveal thick, steel-grey hair. “You ever try fixing a Spitfire engine?”

Rey stares at him. She's somehow never heard him speak before, and she's as surprised to find that he's a Yank as she is by the question. Now that she thinks of it, the young Squadron Leader who sometimes drops off the Rolls is American too; there must be an Eagle Squadron stationed at the base.

“You not speak or something?" The craggy officer raises an eyebrow at her, and Rey flushes.

"I can speak," she says quietly, wiping her hands on the legs of her overalls before she lets herself out of the car.

The man gives the bonnet an affectionate pat. "You always do a great job with the Falcon." He looks sharply at her before continuing, "I bet you’d love to get your hands on what they're putting in our kites these days.”

Rey folds her arms, uncomfortable under his scrutiny. “I’m fine where I am.”

“What’s that accent, kid?”

Rey bites her tongue, returning his stare with a stony expression, and the man frowns at her. “Where -”

He’s interrupted by Plutt’s arrival - “Wing Commander Solo! Anything I can help you with today?” - and Rey takes the chance to escape, bolting into the back room. He was being nice, she knows, and the truth is she would _love_ to have the chance to tinker with a Spitfire engine, but she can’t leave.

She can’t.

 _Je reviens._  

Rey shudders, and decides to try and fix her problems the way that the English do - with a strong cup of tea.

 

* * *

 

The next afternoon she’s lying on the trolley, absorbed in the undercarriage of a neat little Sunbeam Talbot. Above her Finn’s joking around, telling some absurd story about escaping his orphanage by boosting a motorbike, but Rey isn’t really listening, so it takes her a while to notice when he falls quiet.

In fact, she realises, the whole garage sounds oddly deserted, and she wonders if she maybe missed an air-raid siren or something as she shoves herself out from under the car.

Rey’s first thought as she stands and dusts herself off is that she’s alone, and then she realises with a start that there’s a woman leaning against the dark blue bonnet of an Austin 14, watching her.

She’s older, probably in her mid-fifties: tiny, composed, and beautifully dressed in a tailored suit with a matching hat and clean, white gloves. Her hair is neatly set, brown softening to grey, and her eyes are dark and glittering as they make a frank appraisal of the girl in front of her. Rey feels grubby by comparison, suddenly hyper-aware of the oil-stains on her knees and the streaks of grime that tend to appear on her cheeks when she isn’t paying attention.

The woman doesn’t say anything, and there's a moment of silence before she reaches into her handbag for a silver cigarette case, opening it and holding it out towards Rey, who shakes her head.

“You shouldn’t smoke in here.”

She doesn’t know why she does it, but Rey speaks in the mother tongue that has never deserted her. Immediately she feels a blush start somewhere around her sternum, climbing out of the neck of her overalls to rise to the roots of her hair. The woman’s lips quirk into a little smile, and she nods her head towards the side door before responding in the same language.

“Outside then?”

Rey trails mutely behind her as the woman steps out into the street. Up by the main doors to the garage she can see a small crowd is gathered. Rey spots Finn’s dark hair and Plutt’s bulk, along with a couple of the other mechanics and a few men in RAF Uniforms, gathered around the back of a military truck.

“They won’t bother us,” the woman says, as she places a cigarette against her lips. “I had some of my boys bring them something to look at.” She lights it and takes a long drag, then exhales a stream of bluish smoke through her nose.

Rey recognises the rich scent of Gitanes; feels the stir of childhood memory. The mechanic in her wants to know _what_ exactly, has caught everyone’s attention, but right now she’s more curious as to why this strange woman is here talking to her in French. “Who are you?”

The woman’s smile deepens, reaching those dark eyes, which glitter knowingly. “My husband was right about you, I think.”

She speaks like a native: her accent is refined, and her voice a little gravelly.

“Your husband?”

“With the Rolls Royce.” Her voice lilts across the ‘r’s, and it is a beautiful sound that makes Rey’s breath catch with a wave of nostalgia.

“The Wing Commander? What did he say?”

The woman takes another drag on her cigarette. “That there was a French girl who knew engines working for his tobacco supplier, and I might be interested in talking to her.”

“I never told him I was French.”

“He’s lived with me long enough to know what it sounds like.” The woman’s smile is warm, though the lines in her face are sad.

They’re silent for a moment as the woman finishes her cigarette, and Rey considers how to frame her next question. “Why would you be interested in talking to me?”

The woman grinds the end cigarette against the brick wall, and then surprises Rey by placing the stub back in the silver case. “Because I think that I could use a girl like you,” she says.

“A girl like me?”

The cigarette case goes back into the woman’s handbag, and when her hand re-emerges there’s a cream-coloured card in it, which she holds out to Rey between her gloved fingers. “Come and see me this evening. Would half past six suit?”

Rey takes the card, feeling the weight and softness of it the stock, and surprises herself by nodding silently. There's an address on Baker Street, which it shouldn't take her too long to get to. She turns the card over, holding it carefully so as not to leave oily fingerprints.  _Leia Organa_ , she reads. _Admiralty_. “Your name,” she says, before it occurs to her that she should probably try not to be rude.

“Ah yes.” The woman sighs. “I have some very modern ideas about what women should and shouldn’t do, including calling themselves by their husbands’ names, and actively participating in overseas operations.” Rey looks up sharply at that, and the woman’s eyes sparkle. “I suggest you call me Leia, for now. And I may call you..?”

“Rey.” She hesitates, then goes on, “Rey la Charogne. But just Rey.”

“Just Rey. Excellent,” the woman says, turning on her heel to head back inside the garage. Without prompting, Rey follows her in, and then out again through the main doors to where the men are gathered. As they emerge Leia surprises her by taking hold of her shoulders and swooping to kiss the air beside her cheeks. “Thank you for your help, chérie!”

A couple of the men look up from whatever it is the pilots have brought over in the bed of a truck, and Rey nods politely to Wing Commander Solo. He gives her the slightest of winks before he looks at his wife. “Find what you needed in there, honey?”

“Just had to powder my nose, that’s all,” Leia smiles. The transition from the quiet, careful woman who spoke to Rey alone to this beaming lady of leisure is startling. “Now, have you quite finished out here?”

"Almost," her husband replies. "But I thought the girl might want a look at -"

“Is that a Merlin?” Rey asks excitedly, shouldering Finn out of the way as she leans in to admire the gleaming aircraft engine.

Solo grins broadly. “We just picked it up. One of our Spits needs a replacement. Didn’t I say I knew you’d want to get your hands on one?”

“Wing Commander Solo?” The dark-haired pilot who occasionally drops off Solo’s car has stepped to his CO’s elbow, throwing Rey an apologetic look.

“Yes, Dameron?”

“We should be going, sir - we have -”

“Yeah, yeah.” Solo rolls his eyes. “Honestly, you come to London, you think it’s going to be all glitz and glamour, and then they have the nerve to get into another -”

“Sir?” Dameron prompts, and Solo sighs.

“Nice to see you all,” he says. “Mr Plutt - I’ll be by to pick up that order on Friday.”

“Right you are sir,” Plutt agrees in his most unctuous tone, wiping his meaty hands on his soiled shirt before he reaches to shake the Wing Commander’s hand.

To his credit, Solo only grimaces very slightly, and then he throws the rest of them a wry salute. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” he grunts, before he and Leia follow Squadron Leader Dameron over to the waiting car, as another man hops up into the cab of the truck. Soon the little convoy has disappeared, and Rey and Finn are the last two left standing outside.

“He offer you a job at the airfield or something?”

“What?” Rey furrows her forehead in genuine confusion, and Finn gives her a bashful smile.

“The Wingco basically demanded they stop here so that he could show ‘that funny girl’ his new Merlin engine,” he says. “He’s trying to poach you to go and work for the flyboys.”

“Nah.” Rey kicks at the ground. “He just wanted to show off.”

Finn gives her a look that tells her he’s not buying it. “I wouldn’t blame you if you went, you know.”

“Went where? The air base?” Rey’s stomach clenches, suddenly guilty, though she hasn’t even done anything yet, and even if she had -

“Anywhere.” Finn shrugs. “It's got to be better than being stuck here working for Plutt, right?”

 _Je reviens_. Rey hears the whisper of it, and her fingers close around Leia Organa’s card in the pocket of her overalls.

“I think if you want to get away from here you could do worse things than talk to Dameron next time he brings in the Wingco’s car,” she says, only very slightly sly.

“Maybe,” Finn says, non-committal. Rey isn’t sure, but she thinks he might be blushing a little bit.

“I’m going to go and finish the Talbot,” she sighs. “Then I think I might take the rest of the afternoon.”

She has an appointment in Baker Street this evening, and she’ll need at least an hour to scrub the worst of the oil from under her fingernails.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know nothing about engines, or vintage cars, so I've just made up a load of nonsense that I hope sounds vaguely convincing.
> 
> 'Kite' is RAF slang for any aircraft. 'Spits' are Spitfires. 'Wingco' is an abbreviation of Wing Commander, which is roughly where I reckon Han's rank would fall. Eagle Squadrons were made up of volunteer American pilots who joined the RAF prior to the US entering WW2 but I'm playing a bit fast and loose with my timings here because this story is set in 1942/3.
> 
> La Charogne means 'carrion' which sounds way more poetic in French but is basically 'the scavenger.'
> 
> And honestly what could be more French than being an exiled princess spy? NOTHING.


	2. Author

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Author** : the maker of anything; creator; originator._

 

**_Auvergne Region, France - October 1942_ **

He dreams in grey, and it matches his surroundings.

This country is bowing under the strain of the Occupation, and it is draining the lifeblood from it. The people’s faces are pinched, their eyes suspicious, and their movements furtive.

He grew up in London, but his family used to spend summers in the countryside here as a boy. His grandmother left his mother a beautiful château full of quiet, sun-drenched rooms - numerous enough for him to get lost as he played, far out of earshot of his parents' bickering. His father never really liked summering here. It was too quiet, the pace of life too slow, and the French (with the exception of his mother) didn't seem to get his brash American humour. Han would take his ridiculous car and drive off to Paris, or come up with some pretext to go back to London early. His mother would at least stay the whole summer, but she seemed to know everyone in the Auvergne so she would be forever be heading off to see friends and acquaintances, or worse, entertainingthem herself.

Now, his mother's friends have mostly fled the country and the family château now serves as headquarters for one of the occupying garrisons. If he wanted to take a trip to Paris (the idea in itself is laughable) he would need any number of permits, and that's before he'd somehow found a car. The bright sunlight that he remembers from his childhood seems reluctant to make an appearance. The skies are permanently clouded, the light weak and drab.

The loneliness is the only thing that doesn’t seem to have changed.

The fuel shortage is so severe that he uses a bicycle most of the time, taking long rides through the surrounding countryside, taking note of likely places for a Lysander to touch down, watching the movements of troop convoys. He’s a large man - tall like his father, and broad with it, and he’s sure he cuts a slightly ridiculous figure on the bicycle.

It’s embarrassing, but there’s little he can do about it. He needs to get around somehow.

Most of the farmers have reverted to horse-drawn machinery, and the thin beasts plod through the fields and along the roads. Some of the farmers raise a hand to him in greeting when he passes their carts. Some do not. All of them regard him with suspicion. There are not many young men who roam freely through France.

With hindsight, it was a pathetic mistake to have made. Knight circuit is comprised of three men and two women, all of them young and fit. They were trained to fight and to blend in, but it never occurred to them that there might be nothing left to blend in with.

They were made almost as soon as they arrived in the country: too young, too inexperienced, too earnest.

 _Too rash_ , his uncle Luke would say, and he would burn with shame and resentment.

He had expected the beating they gave him. Had, in fact, expected further torture, imprisonment, and finally execution. He hadn’t expected to be fetched from the gaol and brought to the Hôtel de Ville, where the SS had established their headquarters in the town. He certainly hadn’t expected Standartenführer Snoke to smile and praise his audacity, to pour him a glass of the good brandy kept in the part of the cellars not made over to prisoners. He hadn’t expected him to say, “I could use a man like you.”

He’d only seen snatches of the country at that point, but it had been enough to cause him to waver. The people were grey and tired and defeated, the shop windows half-empty. He’d raised his chin and held Snoke’s gaze, trying to tell himself that he was acting for the good of his network, ignoring the little voice in his head that told him he was preening at finally having someone see his worth. “What would I have to do?”

 

* * *

 

They assign him a codename, in case their transmissions are intercepted. He is a precious resource, Snoke says. He needs to be protected.

Now, he tries to inhabit Kylo Ren all the time; tries to forget the name that he had before. Knight circuit closes ranks around him, trusting his judgement and following his lead. They were recruited for a dangerous mission, but now they dance on a knife-edge so sharp that it threatens at every moment to cut them to pieces.

Kylo Ren will not let that happen.

“He’s not ready,” his uncle had said, when the mission had come up. “He’s too passionate, too emotional -”

“His training scores are some of the highest we’ve seen,” the anonymous bureaucrat had sniffed, and Kylo had tried not to smirk as his uncle was overruled.

It galls him that Luke has been proven right, that he has let his emotions rule his judgement. But when put on the spot by Snoke, Kylo (who feels that he has never been shown loyalty of any sort) found that he was willing to return the faith of his network with ruthless loyalty of his own. When it came down to the choice of saving Knight circuit or dying nobly, he hadn't hesitated.

Of course, if and when the SOE find out his actions will mark him as a traitor of the vilest kind, but he'll have to live with that. He’s made his choice, and he intends to stand by it.

And it isn’t as though he didn't stand his ground in some respects. For one, he refused to give Snoke his encyrption keys; made the argument that Knight circuit should have every appearance of operating as intended, and that included keeping Davin as their wireless operator. In exchange Snoke had demanded weekly updates in person - tacitly challenging Kylo to maintain his cover while moving in the open.

Kylo doesn’t mind a challenge. He’s been trained to fight, to strategise, to win. If his uncle underestimated him because of his temper, so be it. If his father found his quiet disturbing, so be it. If his mother never had time for him, so be it. Snoke has seen something in him, and so for the first time Kylo has been given a chance to prove exactly what he is capable of.

He arrives at the Hôtel de Ville about an hour after nightfall, having taken care to ensure that he wasn’t followed. Hauptsturmführer Hux is waiting for him, not even bothering to conceal the contempt on his vulpine face as he nods an unwilling welcome. “Kylo Ren.”

Snoke’s lieutenant disapproves of Knight circuit, and he has made it clear on a number of occasions that they are being allowed to operate with what he thinks is a frankly dangerous degree of independence. From what Kylo knows of Hux, he’s an advocate of dealing with one’s enemies by unequivocally crushing them - which is all very well, but that sort of thing tends to take a lot of firepower, and this is a long war that they’re fighting.

They maintain an uncomfortable silence as Hux escorts him upstairs to the now-familiar office, with its grand mahogany desk behind which Snoke sits in state like an Emperor, or a King.

“Kylo Ren,” he says, and his voice has an edge of affectionate pleasure to it, almost paternal. He looks up, and his lipless mouth draws into a grimace. “Take that ridiculous thing off.”

Kylo flushes and hurries to comply, pulling off the balaclava that he had almost forgotten he was wearing. He sees Hux smirk out of the corner of his eye, and realises that the officer had deliberately not reminded him. He promises himself, not for the first time, that he will see Hux pay before all this is over.

He bows his head as Snoke’s watery eyes make a survey of him. In this room, sat in front of the garish red flag with its black and white insignia, the man seems larger than life, and Kylo always feels somewhat diminished by comparison. Power games are the lifeblood of this regime - terror as powerful a weapon as the Panzer tanks they like to roll through town squares - and Kylo knows what is expected of him.

“Look at me.” Snoke’s voice is a hoarse slither, and Kylo lifts his chin to meet his eye. “What do you have to report?”

“Tekka circuit have made contact.” Kylo makes sure his voice is quiet; dispassionate. “They have a courier arriving in two days time to collect intelligence from a source in the village of Jacqu. They have requested that Knight circuit provide them with support.”

“Hmm.” Snoke strokes his chin with long, thin fingers. “And how do you propose to respond?”

Kylo swallows. Here is his balancing act: save his circuit. Betray another. “An ambush. Cause enough confusion to make sure that we get hold of whatever this intelligence is, and prevent it from falling into the hands of the British.”

Snoke nods slowly, pursing his lips. “Would a courier not have valuable information about ongoing British intelligence operations?”

Kylo falters slightly. “Perhaps, sir. But bringing them in would pose a very great risk to -”

“Knight circuit will prioritise capturing the courier and bringing him to me for interrogation.”

“And Tekka circuit?” Kylo holds his breath, waits for the blow to fall.

Snoke’s mouth stretches into a gleeful smile that looks more like a grimace. “Will be dismantled. Permanently.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Auvergne region of France is where Lyon (which was a centre for both SS and Resistance activities during the war) is located. I'm afraid I'm being deliberately vague about where Kylo is actually based because I don't want to mess too much with the real history. Knight and Tekka circuits are of my own invention.
> 
> Two chapters in two days is highly unusual for me - I apologise in advance for the fact that I definitely won't be able to match this going forward.


	3. Bricklayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Bricklayer** : the act or occupation of laying bricks in construction._

 

**_Scottish Highlands - October 1942_ **

“Again!”

Rey groans before flipping herself upright, levelling her fists in front of her face. Luke regards her critically before feinting to the right. This time Rey anticipates the move, and blocks Luke’s arm as he jabs to the left, using the momentum of his swing to force him off-balance enough that he has to lurch backwards and away from her if he doesn’t want to fall.

“Ha!” she shouts, before Luke dips low and chops his hand into her exposed belly. Rey’s breath leaves her in a _whoosh_ as she doubles over, and Luke brings his elbow down on the top of her spine to knock onto her front this time. Rey blinks, tasting blood on her tongue, and feeling the sting in her cheek from the impact against the half-frozen mud.

“You see where your arrogance gets you?”

She turns her head to shoot him a look of pure fury, and Luke returns her glare with a smug smile. “Again.”

 

* * *

 

**_F-Section Headquarters, Baker Street, London - June 1942_ **

Rey doesn’t know what to expect as she makes her way to Baker Street that first evening in June. She’s worn her most presentable dress, thinking of Leia’s immaculate outfit, but she still feels grimy and awkward even having scrubbed herself nearly raw.

Waiting in the anonymous reception area as men and women in suits and military uniforms hurry in and out she feels even more out of place. At least she’s taken the time to polish her shoes, but they still need re-heeling, and the hem of her dress is decidedly shabby.

“Rey?”

The speaker is indistinguishable from any of the other polished young women who have passed her in the last ten minutes, except that this one, wearing an impeccably pressed WAAF uniform, is smiling directly at her.

Rey rises to her feet, noting the woman’s beautifully styled victory rolls and self-consciously smoothing a hand over her own haphazardly pinned waves. “That’s me.”

“Come with me.” The woman turns to lead her through a set of heavy doors and down a corridor to a waiting elevator, pulling the grille closed with a practised yank.

“I’m awfully sorry you’ve had to wait,” the woman says. “I’m afraid it’s been one of those days.” She speaks with a plummy accent, but her hazel eyes are warm as she regards Rey. “I’m Flight Officer Connix, the Group Officer’s private secretary. She’s not told me much, but I know she’s terribly keen to get you on board.”

“On board with -”

“Here we are!” Connix trills, as the elevator shudders to a stop. She wrenches the grille back and sets off down another corridor, with Rey hurrying behind her.

The air on this floor is flavoured with with cigarette smoke, and the ring of typewriters echoes from a busy typing pool that Connix leads her past at a brisk pace. Rey wonders with alarm if she’ll be expected to perform some sort of secretarial duties, because she might be good with machines but she definitely can’t bloody type, and if that’s what this is about then they’re definitely wasting their time, and she could have saved the tuppence for the omnibus fare for something useful like -

“Ah, there you are.” Leia stands from behind a handsome cherrywood desk as Connix shows Rey into her office. “Thank you Kay,” she nods, and the chipper younger woman sketches a quick salute before closing the door.

“Ma’am,” Rey says in French. “I don’t know -”

“Please,” she gestures to the chair on the other side of the desk. “Have a seat, and I thought I told you to call me Leia?”

“You did.” Rey nods awkwardly as she sits down. “Leia I -”

“You’re not quite sure why you’re here?” Leia’s eyes sparkle with humour. “That’s understandable, I wasn’t exactly forthcoming earlier.”

Rey grimaces. “You mentioned something about overseas operations, but I’m afraid I’m not quite sure what you meant, and if you need me in a secretarial capacity I don’t think -”

“How long since you’ve been back to France?” Leia asks bluntly, and Rey blinks in surprise.

“Probably - fifteen years?”

“That long?” Leia quirks a brow, quintessentially gallic. “You still sound flawless.”

Rey shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “I didn’t want to forget.”

“Mm.” Leia considers her thoughtfully. “Clearly. And whereabouts are you from?”

“I was born in a village called Jacqu,” Rey supplies hesitantly. “Although I think we lived in Paris before - before my parents brought me here.”

Leia obviously hears the hitch in her voice, but she doesn’t pursue it. “And you have worked as a mechanic for how long now?”

“Ten years, give or take.” Rey clasps her hands tightly in her lap. “I mostly ran errands before that.”

“Do you have any schooling?”

“I can read and write, if that’s what you’re asking,” Rey says hotly. She sees the woman hide a smile, and swallows before she goes on. “I can do arithmetic too - Plutt has me help with the accounts, says I have a head for numbers.”

“That’s good,” Leia nods. She purses her lips, tapping a neatly-manicured finger against the lower one. “Tell me, how are you in a fight?”

Rey flushes. “Ma’am, I don’t know -”

“Leia. And you’re clearly not stupid, so please don’t pretend to be. We are talking about sending you into occupied France, so I need to know whether you’re able to hold your own.”

Her head feels as though it’s spinning. “Occupied France?”

“Yes,” Leia nods. “Fighting?”

“I -” Rey bites her lip, then raises her eyes to meet Leia’s implacable stare, deciding that in this instance discretion probably isn’t the better part of valour. “I grew up in the East End, and I work for a black marketeer. I can fight.”

“Superb!” Leia claps her hands together. “I’m recommending you for accelerated training. You’ll need to pass a background check, and there’ll be an interview with the SOE Director, but I think we should expect to have you in Scotland by the end of the summer.” She pauses, and her eyes narrow slightly. “Will that cause any problems with your current employer?”

Rey thinks of Plutt’s aggressive leer, the way his meaty hands have begun to move lower and lower on her spine. “Nothing I can’t handle,” she says decisively, and Leia smiles knowingly.

“I’ll have Kay show you out,” she says. “We’ll be in touch shortly.”

 

* * *

 

**_Scottish Highlands - October 1942_ **

Things had seemed to move with alarming speed after that first interview, and soon Rey had found herself shipped off to Surrey for initial assessment and basic training. By the end of August she had been deemed passable by her examiners, and so she was given a WAAF uniform (“For appearance’s sake”) and put on a train to Inverness, where she was met at the station by a grizzled man who introduced himself with a grunt of “Luke,” and motioned for her to throw her kitbag into the boot of his Land Rover.

That first evening, Luke had shown Rey to her quarters in a squat ghillie’s hut on the banks of Loch Morar, and told her to be ready at daybreak for her training to start.

What had followed was a series of activities that she could only assume were meant to be a test of her patience as much as her endurance. Luke had Rey milking cows and wading into the frigid loch to go spearfishing every morning, then spent the rest of the day demanding that she follow him as he trekked up mountainsides and slid down the steep sides of valleys on seemingly pointless excursions, all the while laden down with a full kitbag.

Rey had gritted her teeth and done as she was bid, falling into bed every night so thoroughly exhausted that she wasn’t entirely certain she would wake up the next morning.

After a few weeks of this, the muscles in her calves had hardened to match those in her arms, and she was no longer plodding determinedly behind Luke, but matching his nimble pace. He had responded by adding extra rocks to her pack, and informing her that they would now be spending two hours on hand-to-hand combat every afternoon.

And so Rey finds herself face down in the mud, cursing her own existence as she wonders how on earth Luke could possibly expect her to take another round of punishment.

“Again.” He pokes her none-too-gently in the ribs with the toes of one foot, and Rey growls, pressing her fingers into the squelching ground and pushing herself to her knees. Luke rocks his weight forwards and aims a punch at her throat, blindingly fast. Rey, acting more on instinct than anything else, catches his wrist with both hands and _twists_. This time she doesn’t give Luke a chance to recover before she kicks out, sweeping his legs from under him so that he comes crashing to the ground.

There’s a moment of ringing silence when all Rey can hear is her own heartbeat rushing in her ears, and she wonders whether she’s just signed her own death-warrant. Then Luke pushes himself up onto his elbows and grins at her. “Good. Now we do knives.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, don't get used to this pace of updates. Thank you very much to those who have left kudos and comments, I really do love to hear what you think!
> 
> WAAF refers to the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (naturally they couldn't be allowed to be part of the actual RAF).  
> F-Section was the department of the Special Operations Executive dedicated to operations in France.  
> The SOE really was headquartered on Baker Street, and there were combat training schools in the Highlands.  
> I'm slightly modelling Luke after William 'Shanghai Bill' Fairbairn (a terrifying badass) who, along with Eric Sykes, trained undercover operatives throughout WW2.


	4. Cinema

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Cinema** : a theatre where films are shown for public entertainment._

 

**_Auvergne Region, France - October 1942_ **

They arrive at the coordinates that Davin transcribed from the wireless just as night is falling. In the half-dark Kylo can make out that the field has been hastily mown to form a landing strip, and he pauses to lean his bicycle against the low stone wall before flashing his torch quickly in the agreed signal. A yellow light blinks into life from the opposite side, and Kylo motions to Phasma and Ithano to follow him as he strides across the stubble.

Unusually for an F-Section network, the organiser of Tekka circuit was recruited on the ground in France, but it doesn’t surprise Kylo to learn that his mother has brought old friends into the fold. Lor was a priest before the war broke out, and Kylo remembers sitting through his Sunday services, the man’s crisp voice filling the the small space of the village church in Tuanul.

It’s almost a shock to see him now, dressed in civilian clothes rather than his cassock. In the harsh light of the torches Kylo can see twenty years’ of extra lines carved deeply around Lor’s eyes and mouth, but his expression is just as mild as when Kylo was a boy, though those pale blue eyes are sharp and watchful.

“Knight.” Lor nods a greeting as the three of them draw level, and Kylo finds himself immensely grateful that the old man hasn’t addressed him by his name.

“Tekka,” he replies. “You got old.”

Lor’s eyes narrow, and his mouth pulls to the side in an expression that isn’t quite a smile. “You’ve changed too, I see.”

There’s a beat of uneasy silence before Kylo shrugs. “What is it that the courier is here to collect?”

“The missing piece,” Lor says cryptically. Kylo is uncomfortably reminded of the way that his uncle would sometimes speak in riddles and half-truths, and swallows the growl that rises in his throat.

“The missing piece of what, exactly?” Phasma asks, quieting when Kylo shoots her a look. Lor, however, actually smiles slightly.

“Of the puzzle,” he replies. He cocks his head to the sky. “Ah, right on time.”

Kylo hears it then - the rattling hum of a Lysander, growing louder by the second. He pulls his torch and balaclava from his pocket as he, Phasma and Ithano spread out to form one side of the landing strip, torches raised to the sky as Lor and his two fellow operatives from Tekka do the same.

The plane seems to appear suddenly out of the darkness, dropping quickly towards the ground where it lands with a bump, rolling to a stop before the engine dies with a spluttering cough. There’s the distinctive sound of the canopy sliding back, and one of the men from Tekka circuit steps forward with an oil lamp. In the low light Kylo sees the pilot stand up, the lenses of his goggles shining on top of his head as he waves to Lor, grasping the sides of the cockpit and shimmying his legs out before leaping to the ground.

Lor steps forward to greet the pilot, and Kylo knows his moment has arrived. “Go,” he murmurs, pulling on his balaclava. Beside him, Phasma steps forward, her own balaclava already in place as she takes aim with the Very pistol and shoots a flare directly into the fuselage of the plane. The Lysander explodes into flames almost instantly, and both the pilot and Lor spin towards where Kylo stands, flanked by his Knight colleagues.

He recognises Dameron, his handsome face frozen in horror in the light of the flames, but it is Lor’s expression - knowing, resigned - that sends a chill down Kylo’s spine. He sees the old man turn to look behind him, reaching out a hand - and then he’s distracted by the loud whistle that sounds from the trees on the other side of the road, and the bright light that blazes across the field as Hux’s hidden troop of soldiers burst into action.

“Get the pilot,” Kylo tells Ithano before he launches into a sprint, ducking under the burning wing of the Lysander to come face-to-face with Lor, just as two of Hux’s men arrive and take the old resistance fighter roughly by the arms.

“There are worse things than ageing, it would seem.” The old man meets Kylo’s gaze unflinchingly.

Kylo ignores the provocation. “Where is it?” he demands bluntly.

Lor just smiles. “You think that I would give it up that easily? You are not one of them. You forget, I _know_ you. I know your family, and -”

“You don’t know me,” Kylo growls, and the old man’s face drops.

“Perhaps not any more.” His voice is sad, and for the first time he looks truly old. “Do what you will to me, it does not matter. The intelligence is gone.”

Kylo remembers the smaller shadow behind the old man as the plane exploded; the way Lor had turned and reached out a hand, and he curses his own stupidity.

“What are you going to do, Kylo Ren?” Lor asks, and Kylo’s jaw tightens at the sound of the codename. Trust the old man to put two and two together.

He remembers the deal that he made with Snoke. _Tekka circuit will be dismantled._

“What I have to,” Kylo replies. He draws the knife and slashes it across the old man’s throat in one swift movement, keeping eye contact with Lor until the old man crumples to the ground; telling himself that he feels nothing even as his stomach gives a violent lurch.

“NO!”

The shout gives Kylo a split-second warning, and he spins out of the way as a bullet slices through the air beside his ear. It strikes one of the troopers who had been holding Tekka right above the eye, and the man drops like a stone.

Dameron comes barrelling out of the darkness, having apparently evaded Ithano, and Kylo acts on pure instinct, stamping on the smaller man’s instep and elbowing him hard in the stomach, twisting the revolver out of the pilot’s grasp and using it to deliver him a sharp blow to the head. Dameron goes down like a sack of bricks, and Kylo draws a bitter satisfaction from having so decisively bested a man he knows to be one of his mother’s favourites.

“God _damn,_ that hurt.” Dameron pushes himself slowly to his knees, and glares up at Kylo, who shifts to make sure the pilot can’t see his eyes.

“So.” Dameron says. “Who talks first? You talk first? I talk -”

“He didn’t give it to you.” Kylo says, and Dameron blinks.

“What was that? It’s a bit hard to understand you with the balaclava and -”

“Take him away,” Kylo tells the remaining trooper, who nods, and motions Dameron upright, keeping his pistol trained on him as he marches him away towards one of the waiting jeeps.

Kylo watches Dameron’s receding form, not turning to look at Phasma when she comes to stand beside him.

“We’ve finished rounding up the rest of Tekka circuit,” she says.

“Have they been searched?” Kylo asks.

“None of them was carrying anything out of the usual,” Phasma tells him, and Kylo swears in frustration.

“We’ll have to get it out of the pilot,” he says finally.

Phasma nods. “What should we do with the prisoners?”

 _You or them_ , Snoke whispers in his memory. _It’s for you to decide_.

Kylo swallows.

 _You or them_.

“Kill them,” he orders.

 

* * *

  

When Poe regains consciousness he has been roughly blindfolded and tied to a wooden chair. The rope holds his arms tight to his sides, looping just below his elbows and then around his torso. He shifts, rocking experimentally in place and learning from the way the sound of the chair scraping that he seems to be in a small room where the floor, at least, is made of stone. It smells of _cold_ , and _wet_ , and _underground._ Harsh electric light edges around the blindfold, though he can only see it with his left eye - the right is swollen shut. There is a sour taste in his mouth and his shoulders are aching and he’s absolutely desperate for a smoke.

“Squadron Leader Dameron,” says a low voice in a thick French accent, and Poe jumps slightly when he realises that he isn’t alone. “Comfortable?”

Poe makes an attempt at a shrug, then settles for what he hopes is a nonchalant grimace. “I guess I could use a smoke.”

To his surprise footsteps sound on the floor, and a cigarette is placed in his mouth. Poe tips his chin up slightly, enough so that he can watch as the man’s hand produce a red-coloured matchbook and strike a match against his thumbnail, holding it out to light the cigarette.

It’s a neat trick, but it’s one that Poe’s seen before, so he’s hardly impressed by it.

“What did Tekka circuit do with the intel?” The man’s voice has moved away again, and Poe takes a moment to roll the cigarette to the corner of his lips, inhaling deeply and then blowing the smoke out of his nose before he answers.

“You know, if you’re trying to be intimidating you might want to rethink your technique.”

There is a beat of silence, and he hears the man sigh deeply. “It would be better for all concerned if you just told me where it is,” he says finally. There’s a subtle emphasis on the way that he says _me,_ and Poe frowns before he can stop himself, wincing when the expression hurts his eye.

“I think I’ll have to decline, pal.”

It’s impossible to tell with the blindfold, but Poe would be willing to wager the man is grimacing. “So be it,” he says, gruff and resigned. His footsteps cross the floor, and then there’s the sound of knuckles against wood.

Embracing the rashness that drives Leia to distraction, Poe gambles that the man is facing away and leans to the side to let the half-smoked cigarette fall into his hand, just as he hears the creak of hinges.

“All yours,” the man says, and Poe twists his wrist to hold the still-burning end of the cigarette to the rope that coils around his forearm. He feels the tension give in the bindings just as smart footsteps ring out across the room, and he hears the scrape of another chair being drawn back.

He doesn’t hear the door close again.

The man sniffs loudly at the burning smell in the room. “Filthy habit,” he remarks in clipped English, and Poe smiles.

 

* * *

 

They wait outside the gaol, hidden from view, as shouts rise up from inside.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” Ithano asks.

Kylo ignores the question, watching the side door of the squat building. He’d left it slightly ajar after he left Hux to take over the interrogation, and he has to hope that Dameron actually has some brains behind all that lazy charm. _Come on,_  he thinks. _Come on_ -

The door swings wide, and Dameron comes barrelling out, looking quickly to both sides before he launches himself down the alleyway.

“Go,” Kylo tells Ithano, and they both set off at a run. Ithano rams the gaol door shut and bars it quickly as Kylo follows after Dameron, hoping the pilot didn’t manage to steal a gun.

A shot rings out, and Kylo ducks as Dameron barely misses him for the second time that night. “Dameron!” he hisses. “It’s Knight - stop shooting, damn you!”

“Knight? What are you doing here?”

Kylo puts his hands up and steps into a patch of anaemic moonlight, readying his lie. “We were supposed to be there tonight to help Tekka with the drop, but we got held up avoiding a patrol. Next thing we hear Tekka has been ambushed and Hux has a British officer in custody.”

Dameron emerges from the shadow of a doorway, his customary smirk in place, even if he does look somewhat the worse for wear from the beating he received. “Not British,” he says. “But close enough. You were watching the gaol?”

Kylo shrugs. “We thought we’d try and get you out, but apparently you didn’t need the help.”

“One of them was green enough to give me a cigarette, if you’ll believe it.” Dameron shakes his head. “It’s like they teach them nothing.”

Kylo has to look away to hide his relief that Dameron hasn't clocked that it was him in the interrogation room. He’d done his best to disguise his voice with a thick accent, but he knows his deep baritone is distinctive. “Come on,” he says, as Ithano jogs up behind them. “We need to get you away from here as quickly as possible.”

 

* * *

 

The Knight circuit pianist, Davin, is a small man with a handsome, intelligent face. He bobs his head slowly as he notes down the message to be transmitted back to F-Section in London, and as soon as Poe’s done talking Davin pulls his kerchief from his pocket and begins the laborious process of encryption. Poe decides to leave him to it, walking out to the dilapidated farmyard, where the leader of Knight circuit is perched on a rusting tractor, smoking a cigarette.

Poe walks over to lean beside the machine. “Davin’s going to press them to send a Lizzie tomorrow, otherwise I’ll be stuck waiting until the next new moon.”

Ben nods thoughtfully. “It’ll be risky, but there’s a couple of landing sites that I don’t think Snoke’s men have managed to find yet. You’ll need to lay low here for the day.”

“Thank you,” Poe says. The day is dawning chilly, and he blows on his hands to warm them, regretting the sheepskin gloves that had been confiscated by his captors.

“Don’t thank me yet.” Ben scowls off towards the pink line of the eastern horizon. “Did you manage to secure the package?”

“No.” Poe sighs. “Lor gave the codes to Bebe when he realised we’d been made.”

"Bebe?" Ben asks incredulously, and Poe laughs without humour. 

"I know," he says, turning around to rest his forearms on the tractor. “I’m guessing she hasn’t surfaced yet?”

“No,” Ben sits forward and scratches at his temple. “I’ll make sure we look out for her, now that Tekka circuit has been compromised.”

“It was one of Lor’s men who betrayed him,” Poe says, feeling a wave of grief and anger as he remembers the brutal slash of the man’s knife. “Do you know Kylo Ren?”

Ben looks up then, his gaze intent. “Where did you hear that name?”

“That’s what Lor called him,” Poe says, surprised by the urgency in Ben’s voice. “The man who killed him. Why, who is he?”

Rather than answering straight away Ben grimaces, dropping his spent cigarette and then pulling his fingers through his unruly mop of black hair. “One of Snoke’s,” he says eventually. “I’d heard a rumour that he’d infiltrated the Resistance, but I didn’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Poe shrugs. “If it makes it any better, I don’t think he saw Bebe, so as long as you find her first…”

“Yes,” Ben slides down from the tractor seat and clasps Poe’s shoulder. “Let’s see if we can find you some digs, shall we?”

 

* * *

 

F-Section respond quickly to Davin’s message. As luck would have it, there’s a Lizzie making a drop with Sabre circuit that night, forty miles south, and so Kylo, Phasma and Dameron waste no time cycling over to another of the local farms, where the farmer reluctantly agrees to loan them his van.

Kylo and Phasma sit up front in the cab, and Poe is in the back, packed under vegetable crates filled with potatoes.

“Lor gave the intel to Bebe,” Kylo tells Phasma in a murmur, as soon as he’s sure that the engine noise is loud enough for them to have a conversation without Poe overhearing.

“Bebe is eight,” Phasma responds, equally quiet. “Why would Lor bring his eight-year-old niece to a drop?”

“Who knows? He always was a wily old bastard,” Kylo sighs.

“What do we do?” Phasma asks.

“I’ve told Bazine to keep an eye out,” Kylo says, knowing that if any of them is likely to find the girl, it’s his courier. “I don’t think we can do much else for the time being.”

Phasma purses her lips, but doesn’t disagree, and they spend the rest of the journey to the rendezvous point in silence.

The leader of Sabre is a serious, earnest young man who introduces himself as Geno. It turns out they’re waiting for a weapons drop, and Kylo’s offer for him and Phasma to stay and help with the unloading is gratefully accepted.

“We were only three to begin with,” Geno says as they share some cheese and bread for supper. “And then our courier went and bought it two months ago.”

“Paige did have a grenade on her at the time.” The pianist, Temmin, smirks. “Managed to take a few of them with her.”

“I heard about that,” Dameron nods. “Didn’t she kill Hauptsturmführer Morden?”

“Yes,” Geno confirms. “But we really couldn’t afford the loss. We’re hoping to have a new courier soon, but F-Section haven’t confirmed when they’ll be sending someone yet.”

“I’ll be sure to give them a push in the right direction,” Dameron says.

“That would be jolly kind.” Geno’s smile is tight, but genuine, before he looks at the clock on the mantelpiece of the cottage. “Right, chaps, time for us to look lively.”

They all rise from the table, and Kylo reaches for his black pullover, rolling his shoulders as he pulls it on.

“Say, can you spare me a cigarette?” Dameron flashes him a grin in which his nerves are clearly legible, and Kylo nods wordlessly, passing over one of his Gitanes as they walk outside to stand in the pool of light that falls out of the door to the cottage. He pulls out his matchbook and strikes the match on his thumbnail, one of his father's tricks that he’s retained in spite of himself. He cups his hands around the flame to light Dameron’s cigarette and then his own.

When he lifts his head Dameron is giving him an odd look, and Kylo frowns at him. “What?”

Dameron is silent as he takes a drag on his cigarette, the tip flaring briefly. “Nothing,” he says, turning away to follow Geno and Temmin to the van.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Pianist' is a term for a radio operator.  
> 'Lizzie' is short for Lysander, which was a plane commonly used to ferry people and equipment into occupied France (it was also nicknamed the 'spy-taxi' for this reason)
> 
> Lots happening in this chapter, and I'd love to know what you think! Thank you so much for reading :). Also, I've now put some cover art on chapter one, so check that out if you haven't seen it. Love xx


	5. Diplomat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Diplomat** : a person who can deal with others in a sensitive and tactful way. ___

 

**_East Anglia - October, 1942_ **

Poe spends the whole journey back in the Lizzie turning it over in his head, trying to force himself to draw a different conclusion. The pilot is a friendly Attagirl that he’s met a few times before when she’s delivered planes to the squadron, but Poe answers her few questions tersely and Jessika soons quiets, leaving him to his thoughts.

Over and over again he sees Ben strike the match, with that same flourish that he could only have learned from Han.

Poe sees the way that the brief flare of the flame illuminated Ben’s large hands; sees the red matchbook tucked between his fingers, just like the one held by the man in the interrogation room.

He sees the shape of Ben’s broad shoulders in his black pullover, as wide as those of the tall, balaclava-clad man who had cut Lor’s throat. And now, Poe remembers how Lor had stared up into the face of his killer; how the man had held Lor by the shoulders and lowered him to the ground; the unspoken exchange there between the two of them at the end.

And Poe, idiot that he is, told Ben about Bebe.

The knowledge sits in his stomach like a heavy weight, making him feel nauseous. The little girl is all alone in the French countryside with a secret that people have already proven themselves more than willing to kill for, and Poe’s as good as given her up to the enemy.

That is - if Ben Solo _is_ their enemy, which Poe can scarcely countenance. Surely - _surely_ he’s got it wrong.

But then he thinks of the way that Ben’s head had jerked upwards when he heard the name ‘Kylo Ren’; how he had paused before answering Poe’s question as to who the mysterious man was.

Because they’re one and the same, Poe’s instincts tell him. Because Kylo Ren _is_ Ben Solo, and Ben Solo, son of two heroes of the last War, is a double agent.

 _“One of Snoke’s_ ,” Poe hears him say in that deep bass, and he curses himself for not putting it together sooner. He was in the interrogation room, dammit, and Poe should have known the enemy wouldn’t have been lax enough to give him the means to escape.

But Ben had. And why?

This is the question that really nags at Poe, as the sky turns to a pre-dawn mauve and the Lizzie passes over the pale cliffs of the Dover coast. The more he thinks about it, the more certain he is (with only the proof of his own eyes to back him up) that it was Ben Solo who murdered Lor, and if their leader has turned traitor then that means that everyone in Knight circuit is almost undoubtedly compromised. But if this is the case, why had they rescued him from the gaol?

 _Why_ had they helped him escape?

After he saw Ben strike the match Poe had been close to calling off the drop, fearing that he was about to see Sabre circuit dismantled with the same brutal efficiency that Tekka had been. But everything had gone off without a hitch, and it just doesn’t make sense.

 _It would be better for all concerned if you just told_ me _where it is_.

Poe knows himself well enough that he won’t even try to deny that he’s a shoot now, ask questions later type (often much to the chagrin of his superior officers), but that means that whatever long game Ben Solo - or Kylo Ren - or _whoever_ he is - is playing, it’s something that Poe can’t see the shape of, and that thought alone is enough to fill him with dread.

Jess kisses the Lizzie onto the runway in a landing so perfect that it would put most of the pilots Poe knows to shame, and then trundles the plane over to an open spot near the hangar. She kills the engine and turns in her seat to look at him. “It wasn’t your fault, you know,” she says, firm and direct. “Nobody’s going to tear a strip off you for what happened to Tekka circuit. They’ll just be glad that Knight and Sabre were able to get you out alive.”

Poe nods, feeling abruptly awful for having spent the journey in what must have seemed a surly silence: a fine way to reward Jessika for having just rescued him from a rather sticky situation. In spite of his guilt, he can’t help the way her words deepen his trepidation about the debrief he knows is awaiting him as soon as he makes it back to HQ. Thinking of Han and Leia’s likely reactions to his news he cannot help feeling that it’s rather a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“Thanks Jess,” he says. “You going to be sticking around long?”

She shakes her head as she releases the canopy, and they both start to clamber out. “I’ve got to bus a Lanc up to Breighton,” she says, pointing to the huge bomber parked on the other side of the runway. “Just time for a quick cuppa.”

“You taking that thing on your own?” Poe looks doubtfully at Jess as she hops down beside him, and she laughs and elbows him genially.

“Nothing I can’t handle, _Squadron Leader_ ,” she teases. “But since you ask, I should have a couple of sparks to man the office, so I won’t get lonely.”

“We couldn’t have that.” Poe manages to drag a smile to his face as they start towards the mess, but it fades as he hears the tell-tale roar of a Rolls.

“Eyes up,” Jessika says as the Falcon screeches into view from behind the hangar. “Looks like the old man wants a word.”

“Yes it does,” Poe sighs, resigned to facing the music. “Have a safe run north,” he tells Jess, and she grins and waves to him just before the Falcon comes to stop beside him with a squeal of brakes.

“Squadron Leader.” The driver touches his cap in salute with a small smile, and Poe is pleasantly surprised to see that Han has taken his recommendation and rescued Finn from the drudgery of his work at Plutt’s garage.

“Hey!” he grins. “Looks like you’ve settled in nice-”

“Stop jawing and get in!” Han yells from the back, and Poe exchanges a wry look with Finn before he does just that.

“What the hell happened over there?” Han barks as soon as Finn has wrenched the Falcon into gear and set off towards the gates at the airfield entrance.

Poe grimaces. “With all due respect, sir, I think it would be best to wait until we can have a more formal debrief -”

“Oh, we’re having a formal debrief alright. You’ve got me, plus the F-Section and SOE commanders are waiting at Baker Street.” Han’s voice has subsided to a growl, and he’s glaring out of the window as the Cambridgeshire countryside flashes past. Finn accelerates smoothly past a troop convoy, and Poe takes a moment to admire his driving before he brings his attention back to Han.

“That’s good, sir.” Poe chews his words, considering. “There’s been some developments that I think F-Section needs to be brought up to speed on straight away.”

Han cuts his gaze away from the window to glower at him. “What sort of developments?”

“Sir, I really think it best -”

“Right,” Han scowls. “Well it’s a good thing we’ve only got to sit in the car in silence for two hours.”

Poe hears Finn snort from the front seat.

“I don’t know what you think you’re laughing at, kid,” Han grumbles, and Poe hides his mouth behind his hand as he smiles.

 

* * *

 

**_Scottish Highlands - November 1942_ **

Luke blocks her with a practised movement that jars Rey’s wrist and sends the knife spinning away to clatter on the rocks.

“Damn it!”

Her temper, and her language, never exactly ladylike before, have not been improved by three months in the company of a surly madman who seems to make a hobby of beating her black and blue.

“Control yourself,” Luke snaps now. “And pick -”

He cuts himself off, turning to squint in the opposite direction from the loch. Rey turns as well, and after a moment she hears the faint sound of a vehicle, growing louder as whatever it is approaches.

As they watch, a Land Rover hoves into view where the road curves around the side of the nearest hill. Rey can’t see faces at this distance, but the vehicle is tearing towards them at a heck of a lick, so whoever it is seems to be in a hurry. Without a word, Luke hops down from the little outcrop where they have been practising knife drills, and starts stalking his way back towards the little clutch of stone buildings that form Luke’s little Highland fiefdom.

“That can’t be good,” Rey sighs to herself, scrambling to collect her knife before she sets off after him.

They reach the buildings just before the Land Rover pulls into the courtyard, and even before the car has stopped moving Wing Commander Solo is jumping out of the front passenger seat. He opens the door for his wife, and Leia climbs down with all her usual grace. Rey is surprised to see her dressed in slacks rather than her more habitual skirt suit. She’s followed out of the car by another tall woman that Rey doesn’t know, but Rey pays her barely a moment’s notice as she realises who has just closed the driver’s-side door.

“Finn!” she yells, unable to contain her joy at the unexpected arrival of her friend. Finn’s face breaks into a wide grin as Rey hurls herself towards him, and he catches her in a tight hug, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around.

A throat clears somewhere nearby, and they spring guiltily apart. Rey can feel her face reddening with embarrassment, and a quick glance upwards shows that Finn is cringing.

“Warrant Officer la Charogne,” Leia says, a hint of amusement in her voice. “It’s good to see you.” Rey turns to greet her, and her smile falters. Leia looks so tired she could almost be ill, with deep shadows under her eyes and hard lines scored between her nose and mouth.

“Group Officer Organa,” Rey nods, her greeting a moment later than politeness would usually dictate.

Leia sighs, then turns to the others in the group. “My husband and Pilot Officer Finn you clearly know -”

“Sir,” Rey throws Solo a salute, which the Wing Commander lazily acknowledges. Finn smiles bashfully at her before his gaze moves to Luke.

“- and this is Wing Officer Holdo,” Leia continues, motioning to the tall woman. “One of my most trusted aides.”

“A pleasure, Warrant Officer; Sir.” Holdo has a slightly raspy voice, and she looks nearly as tired as Leia as she salutes Luke.

“And for those of you who don’t know him -” Leia glances at Finn “- this is Lieutenant-Colonel Luke Skywalker, formerly of the Royal Marines, now our head of close-combat training, and my brother.”

Rey lifts her head at this, looking between Luke and Leia in surprise. “I beg your pardon, Ma’am?”

“Yes,” Leia sighs. “Why am I not surprised that you didn't know that? Now,” she turns to look at Luke, who has maintained a stony silence to this point. “Would it be too much to ask for us all to go inside and have something warm to drink? It’s been a long journey, and I’m afraid we come bearing some rather distressing news.”

 

* * *

 

Luke admits Han, Leia, and Holdo to his cottage and then slams the door, leaving Rey and Finn standing outside.

“Luke.” Leia sighs, sitting heavily in one of the chairs. “Was that really necessary?”

“What’s happened?” he asks, without preamble. “What has Ben done?”

Leia tells the story in a flat monotone that sounds completely unlike her usual jaunty voice. She stares at the tabletop the whole time, and he is torn between the desire to go to his sister, wrap his arms around her and tell her that all will be well, and the bone-deep certainty that what has happened is his fault.

He says as much as soon as she finishes speaking, while he's pouring out four cups of chicory coffee from the kettle that’s been heating in the hearth.

“I could have stopped this. I knew that he wasn’t ready to be out there. I knew he was too much at the mercy of his -”

“No.” Leia’s voice rings through the small room, and she sighs in the ensuing silence. Her shoulders bow defeatedly, and she stares into her cup as she speaks. “It’s no use us fighting about who should take the blame. We need to decide what we're going to do about it.”

“What are you proposing?” Luke asks, glaring at her, and unable to keep the growl from his voice. He knows the answer; has known it from the moment Leia started speaking, because why else would they be here?

Leia lifts her chin and meets his eye with a fiery glare of her own. “Sabre are too depleted to take any action,” she says, “and we can’t risk a warning being intercepted by Knight circuit.”

“So..?” Luke presses her.

“So,” Leia says, her eyes moving to the window, where they can see Rey talking quietly with Finn in the courtyard. “We send Sabre a replacement courier.”

Luke scowls. “No. She’s not ready, and I’m not about to let us make the same mistake that we did with Be-”  
  
“We don’t have a choice,” Han says. He’s been staring out of the window until now, but now he turns in his chair to meet Luke’s gaze.

The room is silent as the two men stare at one another, and then Holdo sits forward in her chair. “The fact is that there are no other openings in any of our networks currently on the ground,” she says. “And Knight circuit are too well-trained not to find it suspicious if we place an independent operative in the region.”

“So don’t tell them!” Luke’s voice rises towards a shout, and he sees the two young officers glance towards the window from outside. Rather then backing down, Holdo places her hands on the tabletop.

“From what Squadron Leader Dameron said, it sounds as though there may be an element at play here that we are as yet unaware of,” she says, her elegant fingers sketching shapes on the tabletop as though to illustrate her point. “Poe is fairly sure that Knight circuit were responsible for what happened to Lor and his men, but the only thing he knows for certain that they orchestrated his escape and rescue. If Knight were working purely to Standartenführer Snoke’s agenda, why would they have done that?”

Luke doesn’t have an answer, so instead he glowers at her until Leia reaches out to take his hand in hers. “Luke,” she says quietly. “Why do you think Han and I took a shine to the girl? It’s because she reminded us of him.”

Luke bristles. “She’s nothing like -”

“She's strong.” Han cuts him off gruffly. “And she was lonely, and lost, until we found her.”

“Ben’s lost, Luke,” Leia says urgently. “We need to send in someone capable of finding him and bringing him back to us.” Her fingers squeeze his. “My son is alive, he isn’t gone, not yet -”

“But what if he can’t be found?” Luke hates himself for the pain that flits across Leia’s face, but he presses onwards. “What if your son _is_ dead, and all that’s left is this Kylo Ren?”

For a moment he thinks Leia’s lip will tremble, but then she seems to steel herself, meeting his eye once more. “Then the person we send needs to be capable of doing what’s necessary. But I have to hope it will not come to that.”

“Hope,” Luke sighs, scrubbing at his beard.

“Without hope, we have nothing,” Holdo says, her quiet voice still somehow filling the room.

 

* * *

 

Finn tells her as much as he knows, which is that there's trouble brewing with one of the F-Section networks.

“Believe me,” he says, spreading his hands helplessly. “If I'd heard anything else, I would tell you, but I’m just the driver. I think I’m only here because Solo likes having someone to -”

“Did you just call me Solo?”

Rey and Finn both jump, and she sees him flush dark as the senior officers emerge from Luke’s hut. “Sorry Han. Wing Commander. Sorry.”

The Wingco gives him an exasperated look before he walks over to the Land Rover. “Come on, kid, we ain’t got all day!”

“Rey!”

She spins on her heel, in time to catch the kitbag Luke throws to her. “What’s going on?”

“You’re going to France,” he says.

Rey blinks stupidly at him. “But what - what about my training? I’m not - you haven’t -”

“There’s always more to learn,” he says, “but I’ve taught you all I can for now.” He shifts his feet, and it occurs to Rey that he’s uncomfortable. Luke Skywalker, combat master, apparently isn’t good with goodbyes. “Someone once told me that failure is the greatest teacher,” he says eventually, his eyes looking past Rey’s shoulder to where she knows Leia stands. “I’ve failed in many things, but I hope that I have not failed you.”

There’s a tightness in her throat, and Rey can only nod. “Time to go,” Leia says, laying a gentle hand on Rey's back, and she allows herself to be steered to the waiting car.

Luke stays standing there as they drive away, and Rey watches him through the back window of the Land Rover; a small shape among the blues and greens and greys of the inhospitable place that he has chosen to call his home, until they reach the bend in the road, and he disappears from view.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll notice I'm sort of blending the events of TFA and TLJ...but I guess that's the beauty of an AU!
> 
> Thanks so much for the comments. It's really great to know when/what people have enjoyed :) so if you want to let me know please please do. I'm away for the weekend so hopefully will be updating early next week. Have a good one! 
> 
> Glossary:
> 
> 'Attagirl': Air Transport Auxiliary girl aka a civilian female pilot (confusingly officers of the WAAF didn't fly)  
> 'Bus a Lanc up to Breighton': fly a Lancaster bomber up to RAF Breighton in Yorkshire  
> 'A couple of sparks to man the office': a couple of radio operators/navigators to watch the communications systems in a large plane  
> 'The old man': a commanding officer


	6. Freelance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Freelance** : self-employed and hired to work for different companies on particular assignments._

 

**_Auvergne Region, France - November 1942_ **

Kylo has had enough dealings with Snoke by the time the summons to report in finally arrives to know not to expect shouting and fury. Instead, Snoke’s anger is a thing of simmering menace, held tightly in check as he directs his men to strip Kylo to the waist and bind his hands above his head.

“I was disappointed to learn of the pilot’s escape,” is all that he says, before he motions one of his men forward.

Kylo bites his lip to keep from crying out as blows are administered to his stomach and kidneys with clinical brutality. The only way that Knight circuit can weather this intact is for him to convince Snoke that he is still valuable, and any show of weakness will not work in his favour.

Throughout the beating, Snoke regards him with his pale, watery eyes, a cigarette held loosely between his fingers. He waits until the soldier punches Kylo in the mouth before he signals for him to stand down with a casual flick of his hand.

Kylo sags against the restraints, feeling the burn of the muscles in his shoulders compete with the throb of his ribs and the sting of a split lip.

“What became of the intelligence that Tekka circuit were to pass on?” Snoke asks.

“I don’t know,” Kylo gasps, grounding himself in the half-truth as he meets Snoke’s stare unblinkingly. He knows that he has his father’s open face; that lies paint themselves across his features; and so he repeats it over and over in his head - _I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know -_ hoping that if he can make himself believe it then he can convince Snoke too.

And after all, while he may know who has the intel, it isn’t a lie that he doesn’t know _where_ it is: Knight circuit have been on the watch for Bebe for nearly ten days, but the little girl has yet to appear. Kylo suspects that she is laying low somewhere in the surrounding countryside, and he feels a grudging admiration for her tenacity, frustrating though it may be.

The Standartenführer’s slash of a mouth twists with dissatisfaction before he exhales a thin plume of smoke, and then steps forward to grind the end of the cigarrette into Kylo’s exposed chest, prompting a hiss of pain. “That is not good enough,” Snoke says, leaning in so that Kylo can smell his sour breath. “Now that the pilot has been permitted to escape, we cannot assume that he has not been able to recover it.”

 _What is it?_ Kylo wants to ask. What had Tekka circuit managed to steal, and why does Snoke want it back so badly? Dameron had mentioned something about codes, but surely codes could be changed if there was a suspicion that they had been acquired by the -

“With respect, sir-” His voice is a rasp when he speaks, and he feels a trickle of blood start down his chin when the cut on his lip opens. “With respect, the pilot did not have the stolen reports on him, and neither did any of Tekka circuit. Is it not possible that the information was destroyed in the -”

“Possible?” Snoke sounds almost surprised by the suggestion. “I imagine that it is _possible_ , yes. However, it is also _possible_ that in failing to recapture the pilot you have reached the limits of your use to me.”

Kylo’s breath catches. It has always been a risk, this balancing act, but if Snoke were to decide that he no longer needs him that would have disastrous consequences for Knight circuit.

“Sir -” he chokes out. “Sir, as I have told you, the pilot made contact with Sabre circuit. If Knight circuit is to remain above suspicion - if we are to remain useful to you - with Tekka circuit destroyed we could not -”

“Yes, yes.” Snoke sounds suddenly bored, and Kylo dares to breathe again. “And with Hauptsturmführer Hux equally at fault for having permitted the pilot to escape in the first instance, I suppose that I cannot hold you solely responsible.”

The admission that Hux is also in trouble goes a great way to calming Kylo’s fears. The Standartenführer is unlikely to want to rid himself of two lieutenants at a stroke, so it is to be hoped that once Kylo has been punished he will be permitted to return to his network. He tries not to look too relieved, dropping his chin to his chest and lowering his eyes to the ground.

“You will make contact with F-Section in London,” Snoke says eventually, and Kylo looks up at him with a frown.

“Sir?”

“You will say that you have heard of the difficulty, and ask them if they need your assistance on the ground to retrieve the stolen intelligence.”

Kylo swallows, tasting metal in the back of his mouth. “And then?”

“And then we will know.” Snoke says, with cryptic finality, and Kylo turns his shiver into a nod of agreement.

“Yes, sir.”

Snoke waves his hand again, and one of the nameless soldiers steps forward to release Kylo’s arms. He drops into a crouch, massaging his wrists with a sigh of relief.

He pauses in the act of reaching for his shirt when Snoke's boots step into his field of vision, and Kylo looks up and into the Standartenführer's face. 

"I do not enjoy hurting you," Snoke says softly, and even though there is a part of Kylo knows that this is a lie, he can read no hint of falsehood in the man's eyes. "Know that I do this only to make you stronger." 

"Yes, sir."

Snoke nods and steps back. “You may go,” he sighs, turning away towards the window and lighting another cigarette. Kylo pulls his shirt on, wincing at the bruises on his ribs, and turns to leave, but he is stopped before he can reach the door by Snoke’s voice. “Ren!”

“Sir?” Kylo sees the edge of Snoke’s smirk as he half-turns towards him.

“I believe that Hauptsturmführer Hux is outside. Please send him in.”

When Kylo steps out into the corridor Hux is indeed waiting, and he turns to meet his eye with his usual sneer. However, all the disdain Hux can muster is not enough to disguise the flash of fear in the Hauptsturmführer's eyes when Kylo smiles coldly at him. “Your turn.”

 

* * *

 

**_French airspace - November 1942_ **

“Last chance to change your mind!”

Rey catches the flash of Poe’s grin as he yells over his shoulder, and rolls her eyes as she sticks two fingers up at him in a gesture retained from her childhood in the East End. Poe’s laugh ricochets through the fuselage, and Rey smiles to herself as her hands dance across the straps of the harness in the motion that has become drilled into her in the last fortnight.

After the months with Luke in Scotland - close combat and knife-fighting and shooting and hunting and the endless hikes at the old man’s relentless pace - Rey had thought she might be just about ready for whatever it was the SOE had planned for her, but she had been wrong. Instead it had been a two-week crash course in cryptography, interrogation, and this: learning the hot, tight, upward swoop of her stomach as she throws herself willingly from the back of a plane.

Flight goes against her every instinct: everything in her life to date has been about keeping her feet on the ground, keeping herself in one place, and yet Rey cannot help but love it. She loves the thrum of the Whitley’s twin engines reverberating through the cabin. She loves the pale blue of the moonlight on the thick layer of cloud cover that masks them from enemy view. She loves the way her body has started to tense, anticipating the jump.

“First time?” the woman opposite her has to shout to make herself heard, and Rey nods, her fingers playing over the harness again.

“Yours?”

“Third.” The woman’s crooked smile broadens into a laugh at the expression on Rey’s face. “They haven’t caught me yet!”

“Where are you headed?” Rey asks, but the woman only shakes her head.

“Better you not know,” is all she says, and Rey smiles bashfully, embarrassed by the slip.

She’s saved from saying anything further when Poe yells, “Look lively!” With a mechanical screech the cargo bay door starts to open, and Rey and the other woman both grab tightly to the overhead straps.

“Thirty seconds, Rey!” Poe calls, and Rey takes a deep breath, stepping forward to stare out of the doors and into the blackness below.

“You’re Rey?” the woman shouts from behind her, and Rey looks at her, surprised.

“Yes!”

“Leia told me about you,” the woman nods. “I’m Korrie - best of luck down there!”

“You too,” Rey says, briefly clasping the hand the woman holds out before the light turns green above her head.

“Go!” Korrie laughs, and Rey grins back before she leaps out into the dark.

The noise of the Whitley’s engines is lost as soon as she starts falling, replaced by the roar of the air streaming past her ears. The plane had dipped briefly beneath the cloud cover for her jump, and down here the night is moonless, giving Rey the brief, bizarre sensation of falling into nothingness. She shakes her head and concentrates on counting the seconds before she pulls on the ripcord. When she does, she feels the sharp yank of the parachute deploying, and her breath leaves her lungs in a forcible gasp.

With the parachute blossoming above her like a mushroom, Rey’s fall slows to a gentle pace, and she can scan the ground below her more carefully. She feels a rush of relief when she spots the amber glow of the small fire marking the landing spot, and she pulls gently on the line in her right hand, intending to steer herself towards the beacon. At that moment, however, there’s a gust of wind, and suddenly she’s spinning, fighting for control as her parachute billows lopsidedly above her.

“Shit!” Rey yells, though her voice is snatched away as soon as it leaves her mouth. The ground is approaching rapidly - far _too_ rapidly - and then she feels the jerk of the canopy opening out again, and barely has a chance to steady herself, bending her knees to absorb the impact as she comes in to land onto what looks in the close darkness like a field, but reveals itself, when she is already too close to change direction, to be a broad stand of trees.

Rey scrabbles for purchase, branches whipping past her face and tearing at the flesh of her hands until, with a bouncing lurch, she comes to a halt as the ‘chute is caught in a tree, leaving her dangling about six feet off the ground, breathing hard and marvelling at the fact that she doesn’t seem to be dead.

“Bollocks,” she mutters, deploying another of Plutt’s favourite expressions once her heart stops hammering so hard that it seems like it might explode. She gives the cords a couple of experimental tugs, thinking to test how fast the canopy is held in the trees, but then there’s a tearing sound and Rey doesn’t even have time to swear before she’s dropping again, this time thankfully only a short distance.

“ _Putain!”_ She’s landed on her bottom in a soft layer of mulch, and the ripped and ragged parachute comes floating down on top of her. For a minute Rey considers just lying there, so exhausted is she by the events of the last five minutes, but after a short while she struggles to her feet and starts hauling the parachute into her bag. She’ll need it for warmth if she’s forced to bivouac in the open tonight, as seems likely. Hopefully she hasn’t been blown too far off course, but she doesn’t want to risk wandering off in unfamiliar country, so probably better to wait until daylight before trying to make sense of the terrain and find Sabre circuit.

Her thoughts come to an abrupt halt when there’s a rustling noise behind her, followed by the unmistakable sound of a pistol cocking.

Rey swallows hard, raises her hands slowly above her head, and turns around.

 


	7. Historian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _**Historian** : a writer of history; chronicler._

**_Auvergne Region, France, November 1942_ **

* * *

Rey swallows hard, raises her hands slowly above her head, and turns around.

For a moment she’s confused, having expected her assailant to be at least her own height, possibly taller if there is any truth to the stories that she's been told of Stormtroopers, but she finds that she has to drop her eyes about a foot to meet those of a very small, very dirty, very _armed_ little girl.

“ _Qui êtes-vous?_ ” the girl demands. “ _Vous faîtes de quoi ici?_ ”

There’s the barest quaver in her voice, but her hands on the gun are steady and there is a determined set to her jaw. She looks as though if it came to it, she’d have no hesitation in pulling the trigger.

“My name’s Rey.” She makes sure to keep her hands in view as she sinks slowly into a crouch, putting herself on a level with the girl. The gun is heavy, and Rey can see the girl’s skinny arms starting to shake with the effort of holding it up. She could disarm her if she wanted, but she’d prefer not to. Instead she decides to risk another approach.

“Are you Bebe?” she asks, and is relieved to see the girl’s eyes widen slightly. The clouds have parted just enough that a hint of moonlight drops between the trees to glint along the barrel of the gun. Rey swallows, her mouth dry. “You’re Bebe? Lor’s niece?”

The girl’s mouth twists at the sound of her uncle's name. “What are you doing here?” she repeats. “Are you one of - of _theirs_?”

“No,” Rey says quickly. “No - I’ve come from England - I was - Captain Dameron sent me. Do you remember Poe?” 

The girl - Bebe - nods, and finally lowers the pistol. “The stormtroopers took him away. Did he escape from them?” 

“Yes,” Rey says. “Yes, and he got back to England, but he’s been very worried about you.” In the moonlight she can see just how grubby the girl is - her light-coloured hair is tangled and there are smudges of grime on her face. There’s something uncomfortably familiar about it, reminding Rey of her own oil-stained childhood. “Have you been on your own all this time, Bebe?” 

“Since they killed uncle Lor.” Bebe’s voice falls into a whisper, and she folds her lips together with an expression that balances defiance with fear. “He said not to let them find me.”

“Well, it looks as though you've done a very good job of that.” Rey adds up the days in her head, and has to admit that she's impressed the girl doesn't look worse. Given that she's spent nearly three weeks hiding away, she's actually fairly presentable. Keeping her movements slow so as not to spook Bebe, Rey reaches for her pack. “Would you like some chocolate?”

The girl’s whole face lights up. “Chocolate?”

Rey hides her smile as she passes over the packet. “I bet you're hungry, if you've been out here by yourself for such a long time.”

Bebe pauses long enough to swallow. “It hasn't been too bad,” she says. “There are mushrooms and berries in the forest, if you know where to look, and uncle Lor showed me how to catch rabbits. 

“Well,” Rey says, impressed in spite of herself. “That's good, I guess.” She pauses,  wondering quite how to ask her next question. “Bebe… when Captain Dameron… when Poe sent me here, he asked me to look for something that belonged to your uncle. Do you know what that might be?” 

At once the girl is watchful, her gaze furtive. “Is that what Mr Poe told you?” 

Rey nods carefully. “He said that you were the only person your uncle trusted to keep it safe.”

Bebe stays quiet for what seems a very long time, chewing thoughtfully on a mouthful of chocolate, before finally she swallows it down and cocks her head to look at Rey. “Do you want me to give it to you?” 

“Not if you don't want to,” Rey says quickly. “You don't know me, and I wouldn't expect you to trust me, so -”

“But you're friends with Mr Poe,” the girl says. “And you came from the sky like he did.”

“Yes,” Rey wrinkles her nose. “Although I wasn't supposed to land here.”

“They made the fire for you,” Bebe says stoutly, and Rey blinks in surprise.

“You saw the beacon? I mean, yes, that's where I was supposed to land, but it was windy, and my parachute -”

“I think they went away,” Bebe says. “They had bicycles, and they did not see you land like I did.” 

“Yes, I don't expect they'd want to wait very long for me.” Rey chews her lip, trying to decide upon a course of action that won't get her and Bebe kille. “Do you know where they've gone to?”

Bebe gives an eloquently Gallic shrug. “I do not have a bicycle.”

Rey has to duck her head to hide her smile. “Right. Of course.” She frowns slightly as something occurs to her. “If you watched them lighting the beacon, how come you didn't tell them you were there?”

“The man who killed my uncle,” Bebe says. “He was not a stormtrooper.” She sniffles, suddenly seeming incredibly young. “He was very tall, and dressed in black, but I did not see his face.” She looks at Rey, the gleaming track of a tear just visible on her cheek. “The men lighting the fire looked like him.”

Leia had said as much when she briefed Rey about the mission. “We suspect that one of our circuits has been compromised. An operative codenamed Kylo Ren is believed to be responsible for the death of Lor San and the destruction of Tekka circuit.”

“Do we know who this Kylo Ren is?” Rey had asked.

Leia had paused minutely before she replied. “Not with any certainty.” She had seemed to hesitate, before going on. “The best advice I can give you is not to trust anybody.”

With the memory of the warning ringing in her ears, Rey gives Bebe what she hopes is a comforting smile. “Well then, I can see why you would want to stay hidden. But I need to find them, do you understand why?”

Bebe nods solemnly. “I can show you the field where you were supposed to land tomorrow. Maybe they will come back to look for you?”

“Yes.” Rey agrees without hesitation - it's the middle of the night, pitch black, and she's far behind enemy lines. There aren't many available alternatives. “We should probably get some sleep before then though. Is there somewhere we can go?”

With a bright smile Bebe holds out a hand, and after a moment Rey takes it. “Come with me.”

 

* * *

  
It's still fairly early when Kylo lets himself into the farmhouse, but Davin is already up and sat by the wireless transmitter, his face tight with concentration. He’s making quick notes with a stub of pencil in a ratty pocketbook, and doesn’t look up when Kylo slings the brace of rabbits onto the scrubbed wooden table. Kylo crosses the room to where a pot sits on the stove and pours himself a cup of acorn coffee before settling into a chair to wait until Davin is finished. When he finally removes the headset and rubs at his eyes, Kylo raises his eyebrows in expectation. “What’s going on?”

“I’m picking up chatter on one of the London channels,” Davin replies, squinting down at his own handwriting.

Kylo sips at his flavourless drink. “What sort of chatter?”

Davin’s look is withering. “There’s a reason every pianist has their own cipher set.”

“Right.” Kylo’s voice is taut with impatience. “Then please explain to me why a coded message that we can't unscramble is of any significance?” 

“I think it’s the Sabre channel,” Davin says quickly, clearly recognising that he’s on thin ice. “But it isn’t their usual time to transmit, and the pianist sounds jumpy.”

“Jumpy?” Kylo barks. “How can you even tell?”

“Because I’m a good listener.” Davin smiles. “If you ask me, I think something’s gone wrong.”

“That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” Kylo twists in his chair to see Phasma leaning in the doorway. “I was in town last night and there wasn't a whisper of anything among the stormtroopers to suggest that Sabre have been -”

“If they’d been rounded up I doubt they’d be on the wires about it,” Kylo says slowly.

“Didn’t you say they were waiting on a new courier?” Davin’s eyes move between the two of them, then he shrugs. “Plenty of cloud cover last night, good conditions for a jump.” 

Phasma wrinkles her nose. “Far too windy.”

“Hard to tell that if you’re flying above the clouds.” Kylo sets his cup down on the table, holding Davin’s stare. “What’s the message protocol if an asset doesn’t make their rendez-vous?” 

Davin is already flicking back through his pocketbook. “Just a moment.” He stops, frowns at a page, and then runs his finger down it before nodding to himself. “‘Jeanne is late for school’.” He leafs back to where he has noted down the transmission, and Kylo can see Davin’s lips moving as he counts to himself. When he looks up, his eyes are bright. “It’s the right number of letters,” he says.

Kylo looks up at Phasma. “Do you think they’d use the same field as before?” he asks.

“One way to be sure,” she sighs, lifting her rifle and slinging it over her shoulder.

* * *

 

Rey wakes up with the sweet, musty smell of old hay in her nose. For a moment she has no idea where she is, and then she bolts upright, her hand scrabbling for the gun that she left by her side before she -

“ _Avez-vous encore du chocolat?_ ”

“Christ,” Rey swears under her breath as her fingers close around the grip of the battered Enfield revolver. She gives herself a moment for her heartbeat to slow down, and then opens her eyes to meet Bebe’s eager, bright-blue gaze . 

“Do you have any more of that chocolate?” the girl asks again, and Rey dips her chin to hide her smile as she turns to rummage in her knapsack. 

“It isn’t very appropriate at breakfast time,” she says as she searches, and from behind her she hears a snort.

“I have been eating mushrooms for breakfast for weeks,” Bebe objects. “Chocolate is much better.” 

Unable to dispute the argument, Rey shrugs and hands over the packet of Bournville. “There isn’t much more of that, so you might want to save some -” Bebe crumples the empty wrapper in her hand “- for later,” Rey finishes weakly.

Bebe smiles mischievously at her. “You slept for ages. Are you ready to go and look at the field now?” 

“I slept for -” Rey looks at her watch, alarmed to see that it’s already 10am. “Oh cripes.” 

“It is tiring, I think, falling from the sky,” Bebe remarks airily, and Rey catches herself rolling her eyes fondly as she rolls up the torn parachute that she and Bebe had wrapped themselves in to sleep, stuffing it into the top of her knapsack. When she stands up the floor of the old hayloft creaks ominously under her weight, and Rey glances around, able to see in the weak daylight that the place is definitely more derelict than simply run-down.

“Bebe,” she asks, as she follows her along an the overgrown track that leads away from the overgrown farm. “Will you come with me if we find my friends?”

The girl has her arms thrown out to each side as she balances along the edge of the old wheel ruts that scar the lane. “Will you tell them that I have my uncle’s maps?”

 _Maps._  Rey draws a sharp breath. What sort of a map would be worth killing an entire circuit for? Could be worth a double agent risking exposure? 

“I won't tell them anything you don't want me to,” she says evenly, relieved when Bebe spins on her toes and beams widely at her. “But if you want, I can see if they would be able to take you away from here.”

“Take me away where?” Bebe asks curiously, as she veers off the track and onto a narrow track that leads into the woods.

“Well,” Rey says, partly distracted by having to push branches out of the way that don't affect the small girl’s progress. “To London, if you wanted.” 

“Like Mr Poe?” Bebe halts on top of a fallen tree trunk, looking down at Rey with an expression equal parts curiosity and scepticism. 

“Yes,” Rey says. “Like Mr Poe.”

Bebe sniffs before heading onwards. “That might not be so bad.”

They continue walking through the woods in silence, even the sound of their steps muffled by the thick blanket of pine needles on the ground. Rey listens to the sounds of birdsong, of her own breathing and heartbeat, and soon she slips into the almost trancelike state that is familiar to her from her long treks across the Highlands following Luke.

“That is where you fell,” Bebe points off to their left after perhaps half an hour of walking, and glancing in the direction indicated, Rey spots the light brown scar down the side of the tree where she slid down it, tearing branches in her wake after her parachute ripped. It's distressingly obvious if you know what you're looking for, and she thanks whatever forces are watching over her that these woods are not patrolled by the Stormtroopers. 

They carry on for another ten minutes or so until the woods end abruptly at a drystone wall. “It is this next field,” Bebe says, and Rey clambers up onto the wall, squinting at the scrubby grass through the light haze of rain that has just started falling. The field is certainly broad and even enough to land a plane, but she can see nothing else remarkable about it.

“Well,” she says. “I guess we've had a wasted -”

“Sshh!” Bebe hushes her, her ear cocked into the wind, and then Rey hears it too: the sputter of an engine. They are both frozen for a moment, Rey on top of the wall and Bebe crouched behind it, and then a battered van that might, at one point, have been painted red, hoves into view from behind the stand of trees on the other side of the field.

“That must be Sabre!” Rey exclaims, nearly laughing with relief. “I can't believe they actually came back, I'd almost -”

“We shouldn't let them see us.” Bebe is already melting back into the cover of the trees. “Not until we know who they are - we should be -“ 

“Hey!” 

Rey looks back so quickly she nearly falls off the wall, and her stomach drops when she sees a tall man with a peaked hat pulled low on his head jump out of the cab of the van. He's still all the way across the field, but even at this distance she can hear the loud _snick_ as he pulls back the bolt on his rifle and lifts it to his shoulder. 

“Bebe,” Rey says very quietly, out of the side of her mouth. “Get away from here.” 

“What about you?” Bebe asks. Rey doesn't risk looking behind her, but she can hear the terror in the girl’s voice. 

“Who are you?” the man calls across the field, and for the second time in less than a day, Rey raises her hands above her head.

“I'll be fine,” she says, very quietly, even as she steps slowly forward off the wall and into the field. “I’ll come and find you at the barn as soon as I can.”

She hears nothing more but a brief rustle from behind her, and Rey can only hope Bebe gets away cleanly. The man is stalking towards her now, but as well as the hat he’s got his jacket collar turned up, and between that and the way he’s holding his rifle Rey can barely see any of his face. She swallows tightly, and walks to meet him.

“I asked you a question,” he says, drawing to a halt when they are only a few yards apart. His voice is low, throaty, but muffled by a scarf. 

This isn’t the coded greeting agreed with Sabre circuit, and Rey’s mouth feels dry, her face stiff as she tries to stretch her cheeks into a smile. “My name’s Rey,” she says, glad to hear her voice is at least steady. “I’m from Jacqu village -“

“I haven’t seen you before,” the man says evenly. But for the gun pointing at her head, he might be commenting on the weather. It’s unnerving not knowing what he looks like; all Rey can see is the glint of dark eyes from the shadows beneath his peaked cap. 

“Maybe you just forgot,” she says. Her hands are still at shoulder height, but her gun is on her hip and she itches to reach for it.

Her hand twitches, a flicker of movement, but the man spots it and she sees his finger tighten on the trigger. “No,” he says. “I don’t think I did.”

One moment he’s staring at her along the barrel of the gun, the next he’s moving almost too fast for Rey to follow. She barely has time to open her mouth before the stock of the rifle meets her temple, and everything goes dark.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical note: I have MASSIVELY simplified the way that radio codes were used during WW2, but please forgive me the contrivance.  
> Also just to say thanks to everyone for reading but especially those who have landed on this story in the past few days, and apologies for my prolonged absence from it. Feedback and responses hugely welcome - this is being written out of love for a ship and for a historical period, but it’s always really nice to know I’m not sailing off alone!!  
> À bientôt, mes amis!


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